The balance between nurturing our roots, and being entangled in them
Two weeks ago on November 19, we celebrated the Bar Mitzvah of Felix Edelman. Felix’s parashah (Torah portion) was Chayei Sara, a phrase which literally translates to “the life of Sara,” Sara being the foremost matriarch of the Jewish people.
The parashah opens with Sara’s life coming to an end, her husband Abraham grieving her, and then him searching for a plot of land in which to bury her. It proceeds with Abraham seeking out a wife for his and Sara’s only son together, the inheritor of the Israelite spiritual legacy, Isaac.
Abraham is said to have been living then in Canaan, near Hebron (about 20 miles south of present-day Jerusalem), the land which Abraham heard the Divine call to journey to, the land which formed the covenant between Adonai, the Source of Being, and Abraham’s eventual descendants.
When Abraham engages his devoted servant to help find a wife for his son Isaac, Abraham instructs him to reverse the journey Abraham has married: to return to the land from which he came, where Abraham and Isaac’s kinsmen lived to find a wife for Isaac there. At the same time, Abraham exhorts the servant not to have Isaac return to that land; he and his wife are to start the next chapter of their lives in Canaan, the land which serves as the basis for the Divine covenant.
For his D’var Torah, Felix wondered aloud what the significance could be of Abraham both being so intent on having Isaac’s wife come from his former home, while also making sure that Isaac did not return there. What explains this potential inconsistency and what does it have to teach us?
For Felix, this event is a symbol of how, in many ways, we should formulate our own relationship with our past, our history, and our roots: first that we should form a relationship to it, that it’s important to understand where we come from, both on an historical level and a familial level: that raising our roots to a level of consciousness can help us have a healthy relationship to them. At the same time, as symbolized by Abraham’s insistence that Isaac not go back there, it’s also important that we turn our page to the next chapter of our lives, that we now be weighed down by, and entangled in, our past.
This relates, too, to our relationship with our Judaism and how we live it out. Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan was famous for suggesting that the past should have a vote over how we live out our Judaism but not a veto; we bring our own sensibilities to it, even while we have the humility to acknowledge that ancient wisdom and practices have something really powerful to offer our lives.
We thank Felix for his wise Torah. Mazal Tov to him and the whole Edelman family.
Inspired by Felix’s theme, I offered the following D’var Torah the Friday night preceding his Bar Mitzvah:
—
Felix’s Parasha is called Chayei Sarah, the life of Sarah. It falls early in the Book of Bereshit, the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Torah, where the forebears of the Jewish people, the foremost being Abraham and Sarah, first experience their relationship with Adonai, the source of all being.
Chayei Sara, the life of Sara, is perhaps an ironic title for this parashah, because it comes in the context of announcing her death. וַיִּהְיוּ֙ חַיֵּ֣י שָׂרָ֔ה מֵאָ֥ה שָׁנָ֛ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה וְשֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֑ים שְׁנֵ֖י חַיֵּ֥י שָׂרָֽה׃ “Sarah’s lifetime—the span of Sarah’s life—came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.” וַתָּ֣מׇת שָׂרָ֗ה בְּקִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע הִ֥וא חֶבְר֖וֹן בְּאֶ֣רֶץ כְּנָ֑עַן “Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan,” what we now know as Israel.
As always when we encounter Torah we do so from the perspective of asking what insight can it bring to our lives, how might it call to us, spurring us to act with sacredness and holiness as it has done for our ancestors in each generation, serving as an etz chayim, a tree of life, constantly growing pulsing with that life.
Perhaps it starts from the next phrase in the Torah portion which says, “ וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ׃.” Sarah’s husband Abraham proceeded לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה (lispod Sara) to mourn for Sara, the accepted translation says, וְלִבְכֹּתָֽה, and to bewail her.
Lispod Sara, however, doesn’t just mean to mourn her. Those familiar with Jewish funerals know that the word lispod is connected to the word hesped—eulogy. This may be our first instance of a eulogy in Jewish tradition: “Sarah died in Kiriath-arba—now Hebron—in the land of Canaan, and Abraham proceeded to eulogize her.”
Now why is this significant, and why am I talking about it on the eve of Felix celebrating his becoming Bar Mitzvah?
A Bar Mitzvah is a significant life cycle event where we say goodbye, parents and child alike, to one phase of life getting ready for another.
Nowhere is that more true than in a parallel Jewish life cycle moment, the funeral. The funeral for Sarah is perhaps the paradigmatic moment of this. Abraham is left to say goodbye to Sarah, to say goodbye to a major chapter of his life and to move forward to the next one. How does he do this? As Rabbi Shefa Gold offers, Sarah’s death teaches us “the blessing of the fullness of life, the ripening of beauty. We learn that the time of greatest loss is also the time of most abundant harvest,” continuing, “Even as our hearts break in mourning, we receive (through that very same broken heart) the legacy of our loved one, and we seek a way to secure that legacy, to plant it within us like a seed.”
We’re invited, when eulogizing a loved one, to imagine how to plant the legacy of our loved one within ourselves like a seed. We’re invited to wonder how to keep the spirit of the ones we’ve lost alive within us. What gifts have they given us? How are we like them? What are we taking from them to bring forth to the world to come, to hand off to the next generation, and so on, and so on?
At the same time, Jewish tradition is also careful to say that eulogies must be kara’ui. Balanced. The Talmud suggests that eulogies must be grounded in reality, not inventing or inflating favorable qualities in our loved ones, thereby leading to hagiography, stories that idealize, and in essence dehumanize our loved ones.
Instead, we’re invited to recall all of them, to love them for who they were as we make our way forward.
Felix is going to talk about some similar themes tomorrow, and it’s fitting that he is doing so, because he is entering his own new stage of a journey.
In many ways, the celebration of becoming Bar Mitzvah serves as the Jewish gateway to adulthood. It’s not immediate, just as the grief journey is not immediate, but it marks the beginning of a passage.
And as Felix moves on into adulthood, he too, as all adolescents have done before is him, is going to wrestle with, and honor, what’s come before him, just as he’s going to wrestle with, and make space for, what comes next. He’s going to, as developmental psychologist Erik Erikson would say, seek out his own identity, seek to discover who he is separate from his beloved family. To establish, as psychologist Arlene Harder would say, his own philosophy of life.
At the same time, like Abraham, he’s also going to cherish the legacy of what’s been passed down to him, planted like a seed within him. The gifts that Aaron and Renee have given him, that undoubtedly serve as a strong foundation as he continues to learn who he is.
When done right, ritual has the capacity to invite us to reflect on where we’ve been and where we’re going. Shabbat is its own version of this. There is a tradition, according to Rabbi Reuven Kimmelman, that the first six psalms of kabbalat shabbat “correspond to the six days of the week, each representing a day of creation. While reciting the psalms, [we] contemplate the corresponding day of the week, reflecting on ways to improve it. In so repairing each day, one’s fragmented soul is made whole, a process known as tikkun hanefesh,” repairing the soul.
At each moment on the life cycle, year cycle journey we’re invited to make this reflection on where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how we get there. Felix, we look forward to journeying with you. Shabbat Shalom.
Finally, I want to restate what I wrote in my last D’var: echoing what our President Carmen Hayman shared at the High Holidays: we are growing! We have passed the 300 mark of membership households, which, while hard to estimate exactly, is something like a 30% increase over the last five years—the five years during which the pandemic, one of the most challenging events for synagogue membership in recent memory, took place.
It is an accomplishment really worth celebrating!
It also holds certain ramifications, namely that there are, even if subtly, more of us, which can make it harder for everyone to get to know one another.
I, for one, would love to get to know you better. So if we haven’t had the chance to connect—or even if we have but you’d like to connect more deeply—please, reach out to me and let’s go out for coffee or meet in my office or whatever is convenient. I’d love to get to know you better. If you’d be interested—no agenda required, just connecting more—please reach out to me and let’s find a time.
